I'm working on fixing a wordpress site that's very slow. I need a way to see what php is doing while creating the page. I'm able to do this with visual studio and asp.net. Is there a similar tool for php?
I think you're looking for a PHP Profiler like http://xdebug.org/docs/profiler
I tried to move your question to the more appropriate wordpress.stackexchange.com, but it didn't showed on the possible topic sites in my list.
It looks like your problem is the same as the one answered on this thread on wordpress.stackexchange.com